A river, a boat and the current of history
The Rangiriri paddle steamer survived a grounding and decades of gradual decay. Age may have wearied it, but the boat stands now as a marker to a city’s history. Richard Walker reports.
Wiremu Puke reckons he had a decent pitching arm during his softball years. He got to test himself again in 2010, this time with peaches.
On March 7 that year, the resituated Rangiriri paddle steamer was officially opened to the public, almost 146 years after it brought the first Hamilton settlers on August 24, 1864.
Accounts of the landing day include Māori hurling the fruit at the vessel – Ngāti Wairere’s peach-throwing pōwhiri, Puke jokes. As forlorn a gesture as it was, it made sense since land was being taken from them.
Back then, the peach trees grown by mana whenua were close at hand – Peachgrove Rd is named for them. By 2010, Ngāti Wairere researcher Puke simply bought a box of the fruit for the historical re-enactment.
The Rangiriri was ordered as a gunboat by the government during the Waikato invasion but never fired a shot, arriving too late for the wars.
Instead, in the age of the paddle steamer, it plied the Waikato River until 1889 when it ran aground and suffered the indignity of being left abandoned, its engines stripped to be used for another boat.
Early 20th century photos show the ruins stuck in the shallows, trees growing up through the hull. One shows children using it as a diving platform while a youngster splashes past on horseback. It became a landmark of sorts and was even depicted in a postcard.
Typed notes that are part of Hamilton City Libraries’ heritage collection describe the PS Rangiriri remains lying twisted and rusting about 200 yards downstream from the Hamilton Traffic Bridge.
“The iron plating of the hull and deckhouse were sufficient to turn a bullet,” the account reads. “Loopholes were provided for rifles and provision was made for a gun to be carried amidships on the lower deck. The vessel did not take part in any action, though there were troubled times when she could well have been needed. She was the most convenient steamer to arm and for a time carried rifles and carronade.
“By 1870 the government had withdrawn its assistance to the soldier settlers and the
government steamers had been sold to the newly formed Waikato Steam Navigation Company, which meant that this concern now controlled all of the river traffic.”
The account then turns colourful, including a beautifully delivered deadpan macabre note.
“In a small way the vessels had some of the charm of the American river boats. Drinks and meals were served on board. Steamer captains received praise for their popularity and good service, stewards praised for the excellence of their tables and deck hands and assistant cooks fell overboard and got drowned.”
By 1932, the Waikato Independent reported the “early Hamilton relic” the PS Rangiriri was to be raised.
“The sons and daughters of soldiers of the 4th Waikato Regiment, who were Hamilton original settlers, have decided to raise the paddle steamer Rangiriri, which for the last 40 years has lain embedded in the mud on the eastern bank of the Waikato River at Hamilton,” it reported.
“A committee, consisting of Mrs M. Gould, Mrs R. Mcintosh and Messrs F. G. Mayes, J. Hunter, A. Cassidy, J. Graham and A. Kelly, has been formed to consider ways and means of raising the money to finance the project.”
But it wasn’t until 1982 that the Rangiriri was lifted and placed on the Memorial Park riverbank, where it continued its slow descent to rack and ruin before an initiative spearheaded by then city councillor Peter Bos saw it shifted to its current resting position, up on supports, given a lick of paint and safely fenced off.
There it still sits, gently rusting under its canopy, complete with potted history told in fading plaques fixed to the metal railings of the fence.
Parks service manager Duncan Macdougall can remember clambering around on the boat as a youngster when it was moored at the water’s edge. He recalls it had a wooden deck, which was not the original.
Today, the parks team do a six-monthly site spruce-up, getting rid of rubbish and tidying the cobbles.
From time to time a bigger piece of rust falls off, prompting an interesting thought. “The maintenance guys here have said in the past, when big pieces fall off, are we supposed to collect them? Are they historic?” Macdougall says.
The answer from the museum is no. The council says there is no specific financial provision for maintenance of the Rangiriri, though a ballpark figure is about $1000 annually, with most of the maintenance done before Anzac Day.
The likes of additional cleaning or silt removal after flooding comes from operational budgets.
It says there have been occasional discussions in the community about a higher profile for the paddle steamer, but there are no plans or proposals to do anything further with it.
So there it sits, gently shedding rust like dandruff, a decayed pointer to a constantly revised past. Council figures show more than 7000 use the walkway alongside it annually. No-one knows how many of those stop to read the signs and peer in at the hull.
Today, the man who made this happen laughs at the memory of Wiremu Puke hurling peaches across the river for the opening. Peter Bos had been concerned that the next big flood could carry the boat away, along with all the history. “It was only a certain amount of time that we had the opportunity to do something with it,” he says. “A major flood would take it away or would rip it to pieces.”
As he sees it, the Rangiriri was, in effect, Hamilton’s version of the Mayflower, the ship that carried the Pilgrims to the US.
He spoke to fellow councillors to get them on board and pays tribute to the then head of parks and gardens, Bill Featherstone. He also asked Wiremu Puke and his father Hare for support. It was a lengthy campaign but Bos had a simple approach: get smart people on board.
A former soldier, he then turned his attention to establishing a memorial to the Ypres war dead in Memorial Park, up the bank from the paddle steamer.
Wiremu Puke says it may have been different had the Rangiriri – named after a significant battle – ever fired on his people, but it didn’t, and the history is important.
“We were in total support of Peter and his initiatives to preserve that history,” he says. “As much as it’s an object that symbolises the land war period and the confiscation of land from the Kiingitanga and from us as a hapū, it's a history that shouldn’t be erased. It’s a history that should be talked about.”
Given the historical context, Puke takes the opportunity to mull on the settlement name. “We’ve always struggled with the name Hamilton,” he says. It’s a reference to an officer who never set foot here, he says, whereas Kirikiriroa is more inclusive because it talks about cultivating land and growing food.
“It talks about sustenance for the body, it talks about positivity around how, if you plant for the future, you produce good things. It has a far wider inclusiveness about it than just Hamilton.”
The boat on its peaceful site is encircled by history. A few metres away stands a rock with a plaque, likely to have been put there around 1982 when the boat was first lifted from the water.
“This stone marks the resting place of the gunboat Rangiriri, erected in honour
of the pioneers of 1864 by the Honouring Age Society. A city is born.”
Its triumphalist note is very different in tone from the signs on the fence surrounding the boat in its current placement.
“In 1864 the first European settlers arrived at Kirikiriroa (Hamilton) aboard the Rangiriri,” reads one particularly battered one. “They had been recruited by the government to be militiamen, and to settle on Waikato land that had been confiscated from Tainui.”
The signs are a delightful record of the time, including a nice slice of history about that first boatload. When the Rangiriri approached the landing, Irish immigrant Teresa Vowless handed her baby to another passenger, jumped overboard and “scrambled ashore triumphant” – the first white woman ashore in Hamilton.
Further plaques note that the boat, built in Sydney and brought over in parts for assembly in Port Waikato, was considered unattractive, but had a tight turning circle, just right for the twists and turns of the Waikato River, and could handle shallow water – at least until it couldn’t.
The Rangiriri is the earliest surviving iron-hulled boat in New Zealand, one of the plaques says, and one of only two vessels from the era that are accessible on land.
As full of holes as it is, up close it remains somehow formidable. For one thing, it’s big. A sister ship, the Koheroa, was described as 80 feet (24 metres) long, not including the paddle wheel, and 20 feet across.
Although it never fired a shot, the Rangiriri is like an anchor to the history that surrounds it. A short walk through Memorial Park brings you to the Ypres memorial garden, near the cenotaph.
Also here, among the trees, are a bronze warhorse, an artillery gun, a replica Spitfire and a literal anchor from HMNZS Waikato.
It is a highly compressed military history of the growing city. As if in sympathy to its surroundings, one tree is propped up like a battle-scarred soldier, limbs removed, branches bent to the ground.
There is one slightly incongruous moment; a Sri Chinmoy Peace Mile plaque also finds a place here.
Back down by the river, a family are splashing in the water on the far side and jumping in off the pontoon, with its brightly coloured pou. There is the noise of incessant machinery from the regional theatre building site.
Across there also, in a further marker to history and the river, the war canoe Te Winika has pride of place in the Waikato Museum, overlooking this tranquil spot.